Novice BA flight attendant deploys emergency slide in $95k ‘first day’ mistake

A British Airways crew member had a bad debut after accidentally triggering the inflatable emergency slide on a passenger jet. The incident cost the airline a reported £50,000 ($95,000) to fix and a lot of embarassment.

The cabin crew member was on his “first day” with the airline on Saturday, working on a Boeing 777 forming BA75 from London to Lagos.

The plane had barely left the gate at Heathrow Airport when the escape exit was activated.

Ground staff and emergency services rushed to the aircraft, which they believed to be evacuating its passengers. Instead they were met by confusion.

The inflatable slide, which doubles as a life raft, was released from the plane and removed by engineers.

The episode resulted in a four-hour delay for passengers.

A spokesperson for BA said that passengers were issued an apology for the delay and refreshment vouchers while they sourced an alternate aircraft.

The journey was eventually completed with passengers and the original crew transferred to a substitute jet - minus the embarrassed crew member, who was given the day off.

According to The Sun an insider source said that the mortified cabin steward was “stood down” and returned to training, adding “it’s inexplicable that this could happen.”

There were no further details as to how the emergency exit could have been accidentally triggered.

Arm your doors and ISDs

You may have heard the ominous-sounding instruction for cabin crew to “arm your doors”.

This has nothing to do with placing guards on the exits or that your aircrew may be locked and loaded. The instruction “arm your doors” refers to the firing mechanism that deploys the inflatable evacuation slide built into aircraft doors.

Opening without ‘disarming’ will result in an ‘Inadvertent Slide Deployments’.

That might sound like a lot of fun, but it’s a headache for airlines and passengers. ISDs are a lot more frequent than you think too.

According to manufacturers Airbus, there are around 30-40 per year.

“The minimum cost of an event involving a 90 minute ground delay is estimated at around 11,000 USD ($17,000). If the ISD leads to a flight cancellation and a requirement to accommodate passengers in hotels, the cost can rise as high as 200,000 USD ($303,000).”

If attached to an air bridge it can cause the door to be ripped off and block exits, taking planes and docking bays out of service.

Airlines have different disciplinary measures for crew who trigger an ISD, for some it could be grounds for dismissal.